


Born To Die

by HalloweenEvaa



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Batfamily (DCU), CANT PROVE IT DIDNT HAPPEN, Canon Compliant, Canon Temporary Character Death, Gen, Jason Todd Feels, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd-centric, halfway to poetry, mostly - Freeform, will he ever get one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HalloweenEvaa/pseuds/HalloweenEvaa
Summary: The Life(s) and Times of one Jason Peter Todd
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Born To Die

Jason Todd was born to die.

But first, he lived.

Jason Todd was a tragedy in human skin.

He wasn’t stupid, he always knew he would die young. He was a street urchin in the city of crime, it was practically a death sentence.  
He was born silent, Death's hands already wrapped around his neck.

Because Jason was just another desperate child raising himself in the streets of Gotham. And it  
wasn’t fair, but life never claimed to be.

He inherited a heart too big and a world too cruel. The son of an angry, inconsequential legacy and a dead drug addict.

But.

He inherited other things too, a smile so big it overtook his whole face, a love of books, knowing how to sneak into the theater through a broken window on the   
second floor so he could watch the actors practice.

His father dies, but first he gave Jason enough anger at the injustice of the world to do what he needed to survive. His mother dies, but first she gives Jason all her love for the world to help others survive too.

Jason is alone, just another street urchin, angry and desperate and loving a world too cruel for his too big heart.

But he has other things too. There's a library downtown that will let him stay and read all day as long as he doesn’t make trouble. There’s the acting troupe that   
noticed him sneaking in to watch them, and invites him closer. There's another girl, Steph, who spends her time with him on the days she manages to escape for a bit, her parents are his but still alive. A father with nothing but anger and a mother who wastes away.

Not that he ever cared to speak with them.

She and he are twin flames, she is younger than he is, but he can already see it. A heart too big and too full of anger.  
Jason Todd cannot help but love and love everything. He loves Gotham and her streets mapped out in his fingerprints even as he knows it is those same streets that will kill him. He loves even as he is haunted by cruelty. And he fights with his anger and his small fists raised to protect.

He used to wonder if that heart of his was too heavy and full of anger to have room left over to love. He knows now that his heart is too big, big enough for both. Steph isn’t his blood but he loves her as such anyway, it’s not as though he has any family left to protest. So it is that Jason gains a sister.

They play games together. Rooftop tag where with sure feet and with wide mischief grins they taunt death from many floors up, one slip away from meeting it. They do not fear it, not when it has haunted their footsteps all their lives. Not when playing hide and seek with ghouls of death had made their fun since before child’s chubby cheeks had hollowed with hunger.

But when she smiled at him, mouth opened with a taunt, a “Keep up sunshine!” or an “Are you okay?” Genuine in a way no one had ever bothered to care before, he cannot help but carve her name into his overfull heart.

And he wonders if this is what it is to be alive. Loving with this much fire.  
(Jason Todd has never done anything halfway, he throws his full-self into everything he does, this time is no different.)

He thinks that maybe, if this love is what life is, then he’s glad to live it, even if he cannot forget he was born with the promise of death branded onto his skin. Marked for his sorry fate by Gotham and Her vile corruption.

He would die to protect this girl, he thinks in the end, he might.  
~~~~~  
Jason is older.

Steph’s father is in jail and she and her mother leave Gotham and it’s corruption behind.

Steph is finally safe in a way even all his anger could not do. Only.

Only.

Now he is alone.

He thinks that if his heart were smaller. If it held only anger, he wouldn't hurt so much. But his heart stays too big and he knows he cannot help but to love and love fiercely with his whole self.

He clings to the idea that he will see her again  
(He never does.  
Not in this life anyway)

He is nothing more than a tragedy, a tornado of love and anger and so, so much fire, in human skin.

Jason knows anger. Jason knows love.

Most importantly Jason Todd knows which is more dangerous of the two.

Anger is fire, burning and hollow. Dangerous for all that it could catch and burn everything to the ground. But love. Love is- Love is pain and power and loss. It’s a constant battle. When anger filles his veins it does so fueled by love and his need to fight to keep it. It is a dangerous sort of power held over him. And the worst part is, he wants it. Even knowing what it is, what it does. How it defines loss and inflicts pain like no other. A rose too sweet to resist, but his hands are bare and always have been, and the thornes of it dig into them. Still he reaches up, desperate for another rose.

Jason is defined by love.

He is perhaps still a child, but he was raised with Gotham City as his mother, and she is many things, but kind is not one of them. He can not afford to childishly believe in things like Santa Claus or fairness anymore.

He is kind, but he is angry enough to survive, so he steals.  
Never from the ones like him, the ones that would die without what they have, but he was born on the wrong side of the law.  
No child of Gotham grows up kind and innocent.

But.

He is, perhaps, still a child in some ways.

He plays in the street and he laughs in the rain and he smiles his smile so big it takes over his face and he watches the theater perform through a broken window on the second floor with a sense of childish glee.

And he thinks himself bold enough, strong enough, capable enough to steal The Bat's tires.

(He does not think he is any of these things, but he is angry. He is desperate, so he does it anyway.)

**Author's Note:**

> Has this WIP been sitting ready to post for months?  
> Yes.  
> No I'm not sorry.  
> I have the second chapter all written up 3 is drafted and I haven't touched the last one beyond story outline, so It updates when it updates.  
> Send comments and kudos because I'm severely deprived of social interaction


End file.
